Chapter 9. The Thing You Must Never Touch (1)
"Why?"
That was the first word out of Jihye's mouth.
There were people standing before her eyes. People who were supposed to protect citizens. Of course, nothing in this world could ever be perfect—no country on earth kept its streets so flawlessly safe that its crime rate sat at a flat zero. But still. Even so, this was not how it was supposed to go.
"Why did you do it?"
She asked without really aiming the question at anyone. A few of the officers around Jihye reached out to help her up, but she only stared at their hands as she spoke.
"She saved me. She fought that rampaging Kaijin for me. She did what you people couldn't—so why?"
Because she broke the law? Maybe so—she could see that being the reason. But even then, did it have to come to this? Did they truly believe Jieun was behind all of it?
"Miss, you've clearly been through quite a shock just now—"
"Why did you do it?"
Jihye shouted at the middle-aged man who had come over as if to help her.
"She helped you people! Did you really have to do that!?"
She repeated the words she had already repeated countless times. Scrambling up from the ground, she seized the man by his clothes. He was wearing a bulletproof vest, black underneath.
Did they think Jieun might open fire on them? Was that why they dressed like this?
Officers moved in to pull Jihye away, but the man raised a hand and held them off.
"Wait."
Then he looked at Jihye and spoke calmly.
"That girl was no ordinary person, miss. She was armed, and until moments ago she was in a fight—"
"She was fighting for me!"
Jihye screamed.
"She was fighting for me! Getting beaten down, knocked over, over and over!"
Her eyes were fixed on the man in front of her, and naturally her voice was aimed at him too. But the words themselves seemed meant for someone else entirely.
"It— it was the right thing to do! So you people point guns at magical girls too!? Throw nets over their heads!?"
"The outfit may be similar, but you can't call that girl a magical—"
"...May I speak in her place?"
The officer, hands half-raised as he tried his best to calm Jihye, was continuing in a level voice when he caught sight of the magical girl approaching the two of them, and shut his mouth. Then he lowered his hands, as if that settled things nicely.
Jihye let go of the man as well. Her hollowed-out eyes had turned toward Blossom.
"...Jihye."
"Are you two acquainted?"
"Yes. ...She's a friend of Jieun's."
"Ah."
At that explanation, the man's expression shifted into something vaguely awkward.
To the police gathered here, the name 'Jeong Jieun' was anything but unfamiliar. Over the past month they had heard it until they were sick to death of it—for some of them, the name alone was enough to make them grind their teeth. The friend's face had appeared on the news, but it was usually mosaic-blurred beyond recognition. She had apparently been brought in and questioned, but the special task force rarely had occasion to hear such accounts themselves; their job, as a rule, was knowing only who they had to subdue. They didn't roam the streets looking for work in the first place—they deployed only when a situation demanded it—so intelligence about the perpetrator's circle was the kind of thing they learned only when the moment came. He had taken a step back because he knew that nothing he said now would reach her.
"You..."
Jihye started to say something to Hayun, then stopped.
"You— how could you— how could you do that?"
"..."
At those words, Hayun's mind went blank white for a moment.
Objectively speaking, she hadn't attacked Jieun today. If anything, she had fought alongside her—and that was the only reason they'd won. If Jihye was blaming her for arriving late, it wouldn't have been entirely without logic—
But that probably wasn't what she meant.
Rather—
"You— you did that to Jieun, all of it..."
Her eyes were trembling.
Hayun knew at once that these weren't words born of a rational mind. Jihye was in the grip of panic, doing nothing more than looking for someone else to pin the blame on.
"All this time, Jieun, you..."
As she spoke, Jihye's legs gave out.
Hayun caught her at once. She wondered whether she should haul her upright, but Jihye was in no state for that. Looking more closely, she saw a bruise blooming dark blue at the base of her neck.
Realizing this was more than simple shock, Hayun quickly crouched down in front of her.
"No, no..."
Jihye clutched her head in both hands.
"I never wanted any of this. Why did it have to turn out like this?"
Tears were spilling from her eyes and falling.
Hayun's heart dropped like a stone.
Because she had been thinking the very same thing.
Why?
Why?
It could have ended cleanly without a single shot fired. Hayun had been there. And the police weren't ignorant of their relationship, either—hadn't the news sensationalized it over and over? The terrorist who deceived a magical girl and stayed by her side.
"..."
She bit her lip, holding back the tears.
Even now, Jieun's voice seemed to linger in her ears. The image of her raging again and again, stomping cars into the pavement, was burned behind her eyes.
She must have wanted to do that for a long time.
And she probably hadn't wanted it to end there, either.
She must have wanted to beat the people who shot her to a pulp. She must have wanted to end it all.
It was a voice she had never heard before. Not just from Jieun—of everyone she had ever met, not one of them had ever made a sound like that.
She hadn't known.
No—she had known. Known, and pretended not to. Drowning in self-pity, worrying only about herself, she had simply looked away.
"Jihye, let's— let's just... calm down first, okay?"
"What do we do about Jieun? What am I supposed to do? Is she never coming back now?"
But the questions kept coming, and at last Hayun couldn't bear it either.
Jihye gripped her arm tight and looked up at her, and asked, desperate:
"What do I do? If they catch her, does she go to prison? Why? Did Jieun really do all that? She didn't, right?"
No. Of course she hadn't.
But she couldn't give her those words now. If a magical girl made such a claim without a shred of evidence, it would put her superiors in a very difficult position—
"..."
Disgusting.
Someone inside her whispered, soft and cold.
Still saying things like that, even now.
The one whispering was Hayun herself.
The Hayun buried deep inside—the Hayun she had turned away from, again and again.
You keep making excuses like that, then collapse over your desk and cry. That's why nothing ever changes.
She had no answer to give.
So what, then? Jieun should just go to prison? Just be branded a terrorist for crimes she never committed?
...No. I've never thought that.
Whether you've thought it or not, it amounts to the same thing.
Saying you'll follow the rules is the same as saying you'll let that happen to Jieun.
"..."
In the end, Hayun couldn't calm Jihye down.
Only when her teammates came running and pried Jihye—still clutching Hayun's arm, still firing the same questions over and over—away from her did that one-sided conversation finally end.
But the thought that had once taken root inside Hayun refused, for a long while, to die.
The news of the new magical girl showed no sign of cooling off.
In a way, that was only natural. 'Magical girls' themselves could be counted on one hand in South Korea. Even a single new recruit would have been splashed across every headline—and the 'magical girl' now on everyone's lips wasn't even that kind of magical girl.
A magical girl who stood opposed to magical girls.
That was what people were saying.
When she had first been branded a 'terrorist', the testimony pouring out of her school had been unanimous: I always knew. Not even the tired clichés ever surfaced—no "she seemed so ordinary, I never would have guessed," no "she was such a diligent, good kid." Nothing of the sort.
But now, whenever reporters came asking for statements, the students' reactions had changed somewhat. No one said she had turned out to be kind. No one said she had seemed normal.
They simply refused to testify.
The kids who had chattered away so eagerly at the start had gone silent overnight.
And the reason for that change was obvious.
Fear.
The details had never been made public. What little was released had been censored to a degree, and so the public never learned exactly what had happened inside. They didn't know she had given warnings so that no one would get hurt, or that she had tried to carry the unconscious to safety however she could. They didn't know that the reason she first attacked the Kaijin was to save the hostage it had seized.
But even within that controlled information, one thing came through unmistakably.
That 'terrorist' was a 'magical girl'.
A magical girl who rampaged as she pleased, one who could never be called just. And that magical girl had never once lost to the 'Federation's magical girls'.
Even after the terror attack, she had walked out with her head high. Countless police gave chase, but she vanished without a trace, leaving a massive scar in the heart of Seoul.
She had stolen something vital from the heart of this nation's largest corporation and fled as if nothing had happened. She had broken out of a scene crawling with Kaijin, magical girls, and legions of police, by her strength alone—crumpling one of their armored vehicles like paper on the way out.
Pile all those stories together, and only one conclusion remained.
A being who could crush an armored vehicle like paper under nothing but her own power was walking free in the world. A being with more than enough strength to tear a person apart if she wished was hiding somewhere no one knew.
Everyone who had once testified about the 'terrorist' had no choice but to fall silent. Because if she ever came looking, the next thing crushed flat might be them.
Conversely, there were those who cheered.
Some saw her as a blade raised against the system remaking the world. Anyone who resented the world for whatever reason—people who judged the government, those beneath it, or the corporations to be evil—cheered her on.
"...Damn it!"
And the person burning up with frustration over the whole situation was—
"You're telling me you still haven't found James? How hard can it be to find one miserable rat...!"
—naturally, the very one who had created that situation.
The current Chairwoman of Noir Corporation.
She was the much younger sister of the 'Former Chairman'—the one now officially recorded as missing—and an alien with crimson skin. To Earthling eyes, the figure of a middle-aged woman with antennae might have looked faintly comical, but at this moment, no one alive would have dared laugh in her face.
At this moment, that is.
If she failed to capture the person single-handedly dragging the company's reputation through the mud, then before long she wouldn't merely be laughed at—she would be hauled before a hearing.
Fleeing in defiance of this nation's orders would be easy.
But the moment she did, the Federation's pursuit would be on her heels. The only reason she was safe at all was that she was taking refuge in this country. The deal was valid only on this planet. For it to hold beyond the stars, she had to see the plan through to the end, here and now.
Completing both circuits.
That was what the Federation wanted. Leaving Earth without delivering it would be accepted for exactly what it was—a 'flight'.
And besides—
"Can't find the Chairman, can't find the rat. What exactly are those Federation fools good for...!"
That's right. They hadn't found the 'Former Chairman' either.
It wasn't simply the Galaxy Federation's manhunt that was the problem. Somewhere far away, the Chairman was surely watching her company's predicament unfold with the detachment of a spectator. No doubt drawing up plans to reappear and carve out the 'current Chairwoman' in her turn.
And this whole operation had been mounted with the Galaxy Federation's help, no less.
"The Squeakarians are said to be rather reluctant when it comes to tracking down individuals from their own planet—"
"You think I asked because I don't know that!?"
SLAM!
The Chairwoman's palm cracked against the desk.
The man before her—the one who kept his hair spiked straight up in a 'mohawk'—flinched and trembled to his shoulders.
"Isn't that exactly why I tried to have it handled properly in the first place! You're paid handsomely—what, precisely, are you good at! If it had been dealt with cleanly from the start, none of this would have happened!"
Whatever else was uncertain, that rat had been with the 'black magical girl'.
The hammer the girl had gripped was unmistakably Squeakarian technology. Layered on top of the circuit's distinctive output, it had produced firepower that simply 'should not exist'.
"...That magical girl. The combatant. Jeong Jieun, was it?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
At the Chairwoman's words, the mohawked man snapped to attention.
"Find someone around her worth taking. Someone who'd draw her out if we held them as a hostage. From what I saw last time, there was one."
"...Madam Chairwoman. With all due respect, laying hands on Earthlings is—"
"And what exactly do you imagine this company has been doing all this time, to make you say that?"
the Chairwoman asked, scowling.
"At its core, this company puts Earthlings to work and extracts energy from them. This nation on this planet consented to it, and most of the corporate giants in other countries are doing much the same. Every single Earthling carries mana that overwhelmingly surpasses what the people of other planets possess—every last one of them."
The Chairwoman sank back into her seat, leaning deep into the chair as she went on.
"The fools agreed to it, content to be the only ones sitting outside the arrangement. You think sacrificing one or two of them will even make them blink?"
"..."
At her words, the mohawked man's face went vaguely blank.
"So let's do this properly. We're a company, aren't we? We exist to meet our clients' demands."
There was a touch of weariness in the Chairwoman's expression.
"First, we lure that magical girl out and recover company property. If we can dispose of her along the way, so much the better."
She fixed the man with a level stare as she spoke.
"Request assistance from the Galaxy Federation as well. She might even qualify as the first Earthling Kaijin. If exposure to the energy turned her into a Kaijin, is there any grounds left to claim the source of that energy isn't a Kaijin itself?"
"If we accept more outside help in our current position..."
"What. Do you think the scales tipping their way leaves us simply at a loss?"
the Chairwoman said with a scornful laugh.
"We are a company. Shopping around for better clients is part of the job. You think 'your side' and 'my side' mean anything where money changes hands?"
"No, of course not, but... if the core technology were to change hands—"
"Even so, the government can't build the production process itself. Someone has to win the contract, and the one best positioned there is the company that handles that technology best."
"..."
"You don't think it's absurd, throwing away an opportunity like this over a bit of tax sheltering? Better that we take over the government's Hope Circuit project ourselves and run it."
The companies that had planted roots in other countries surely weren't passing it up out of ignorance. The thought climbed all the way to the back of his throat—but the man kept his silence.
"Monopolize the technology and build a new world? You think that kind of nonsense could actually work? Even if it could, it wouldn't make money. When a resource grows without limit, all it does is become cheap."
The Chairwoman swiveled her chair around and looked down at the city beneath the tower.
Countless lights were down there. Each and every one of them a being—a vast reservoir of energy—bustling busily about its day.
To the Chairwoman, they looked like jewels.
Fit each one with an efficient circuit and load them aboard a ship—what an efficient fuel source they would make. How dearly they could be sold. Restrict the supply, and the returns would only grow sweeter.
"A company is not a religious order. Moving with an eye on what things will look like billions of years from now—there are limits to absurdity."
Even as she said it, the Chairwoman's brow knitted again.
"That woman's granddaughter is on this Earth, I was told. Find the granddaughter's location as well. If she isn't an Earthling, she shouldn't be hard to flush out."
"...Understood."
In the end, the mohawked man could only bow his head.
"By the way... you holding up okay?"
At my question, Jigupa's antennae flinched upward.
"Hm?"
"I mean... you can't work for the Company anymore, right? And you said that was the place that paid the best."
"Ah."
Jigupa slurped down the rest of his ramyeon before answering.
"Eh, it's not like we can't get by. We're splitting the rent two ways now, and honestly, living expenses have actually gotten a little better."
He didn't sound like he was saying it just to reassure me. The look on his face as he gazed into the middle distance, thinking, suggested he had done the math on the cost of living quite seriously.
Apparently the calculation finished quickly, because Jigupa nodded with a rather grave expression.
"The rent getting cut in half is a pretty big deal. That all goes toward food now. Though, well, I am working more days than I used to."
Which meant that back in the day, a single shift's pay would bankroll several days of lazing around doing absolutely nothing.
If anything, now that he was going out to work regularly, his finances were more stable than ever.
"...Really."
I gave him a look somewhere between belief and doubt, but Jigupa only shrugged.
So I nodded. What else was there to do?
About two weeks had passed since the incident at Chungmuro.
My body had recovered far faster than expected, so I was back out on jobs in no time. Through the tail end of February, we managed to live fairly peacefully—days of heading out in the morning for work and coming home with the day's pay, one after another.
All the while, James sat in the corner of the room, endlessly building something.
Every time I asked, all I got was theory so convoluted that simply hearing it tied the inside of my skull into knots, so I gave up asking what he was making. He was a thoroughly twisted piece of work himself, and he seemed to enjoy watching me squirm.
"..."
Well, whatever.
Even if I just sat still, he'd come poking at me soon enough—do this, do that.
I flopped back down onto the floor, and stared blankly up at the stained ceiling.
Were the two of them all right?
Honestly, the worry was driving me out of my mind. I wanted to go see them, ask if they were okay—and not being able to made it burn all the more.
"..."
In the end, what welled up was the thirst for revenge.
Because of nothing more than a power struggle inside a company, I had been driven this far.
It wasn't just because of James anymore.
I wanted to smash those bastards' heads in, too.
I swore I wouldn't stop—not until I hunted them down and pulped their skulls with my hammer.
Because if I let myself think about anything else right now, I was going to lose my mind.